Eliminating Cloud Lock-In

I often hear from customers who are doing an analysis of various cloud vendors to determine which one is “right” for their application. They ask about services, security, service level agreements, certifications, and a host of other important differentiators and ask me why they should pick one over the other. They are usually shocked when I tell them not to pick any. Pick ALL of them.

As people who have heard my views on IT automation know, orchestration and automation tools have advanced to the point where they are viable at the Enterprise level for mission-critical uses. Different cloud vendors have different levels of maturity and different strengths—as well as different access methods (APIs)! This can make it difficult for an IT organization that is already using one cloud service provider (CSP) to switch to a different one. The cost of switching can be more than the features gained or operational costs reduced. As a provider increases costs—or levies punitive data extraction fees—an organization can quickly find themselves in “Cloud jail.” This is why organizations convince themselves they have to do their due-diligence up-front and accept the lock-in. But there is another way.

The Mythics Cloud Management Service (CMS) can automate a wide variety of cloud providers—all of the major public cloud providers, and many of the biggest private cloud systems (VMware, OpenStack, etc) as well. Mythics experts will capture your critical environments and package them into catalogs that your users can then select from a simple website customized for your organization. Resources can either be automatically provisioned, or an approval process can be executed to ensure that only properly approved users are using services. The difference between cloud providers is reduced to a simple drop-down selection on a webpage, and prices are clearly laid out before the environment is created.

Even better, after the resources are in use, the Mythics Cloud Management Service monitors the environments to track usage and alert for potential overspend. The RightScale 2018 State of the Cloud Report estimates that 35% of cloud spend is wasted. The Mythics CMS can eliminate a third of that loss out of the box by identifying environments that are underutilized. The savings increase over time as more automation is incorporated. These savings can more than pay for the cloud management service.

Don’t get locked into a CSP, or spend a lot of time trying to decide where to put your application. Work with Mythics experts today and move your organization to a true hybrid cloud environment where you have “IT-as-a-Service”!